The business of television production is all about creative management and the management of creativity. At its heart lie the conventional canons of good management – financial control, people management, inputs, legal oversight and so on – but overlying this is a need for considerable flexibility. No matter how much market research is done, no-one has any real idea whether a television program will work or not. And production costs are equally unreliable, subject to weather disruption, sulking actors and members of the public who have lost interest in being on camera. It is possibly the only manufacturing industry that conventionally puts a contingency into its production budget.

On the other side of the television coin is the management of the creative process. Sometimes the people are brilliantly and erratically creative, sometimes they are the only people in the world with any regard for their ability. They can be dishonest, backstabbing egomaniacs. Or they can be cool, calm and collected professionals who know exactly how to carry out their craft in a way that adds immeasurably to the quality of the program. They can be the source of lifelong friendships.

The television industry is an industry of paradoxes. Television programs are made, for the most part, for networks that are extraordinarily risk averse, when their own interest is best served by taking risk, and whose commissioning executives often seem to make decisions based on anything but the quality of the program proposal.